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Tag Archives: The Internet

I can imagine the hearts (and other things) belonging to men across the internet swelling as I watch this video of Paul F. Tompkins directing Community and Mad Men‘s Alison Brie as she recreates popular internet memes. Is there a better, more beloved actress who could possibly do this sort of thing? If Tumblr has told me anything, it’s that the internet loves Alison Brie. And, apparently, Alison Brie loves the internet.

Yesterday we complained about the staunch idiocy of David Brooks, but we also briefly contemplated the consistent uselessness of fellow Times op-ed writer Thomas Friedman, whom you will remember as the champion of everything dumb or otherwise not very well thought out. Now, out of nowhere, a website that generates even more perfect Friedman columns than Friedman himself.

Really, now, just get over there and start reading, then refreshing: thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com. The titles alone will have you howling with a laughter that is also fury because: too real. “Backlash to the Backlash.” “Our Secret Sauce.” And, my personal favorite: “Malta is Israel.”

Oversimplifying the brutal complexities of a globalized world, offering advice like some dense and slightly drunk uncle over his tightly clasped hands—that’s Friedman, all right. I’d be shocked if the paper doesn’t fire him and go in for this kind of programming: that way, next time the real Friedman visits Mongolia, they can send him on a one-way ticket.

Uh, guess this wasn’t a scathing April Fool’s joke: BAM is really going to showcase a real exhibit of real GIFs, really! It’s called “Moving the Still” and I’m sure it’ll be somehow completely different from scrolling through a few days’ worth of a Tumblr dashboard, so get on it.

A series of 50 moving digital photos, all in Graphics Interchange Format, culled from over 3,500 online entries, will be displayed for three months on BAM’s giant digital screen on Flatbush Avenue.

Bet they’re all from Parks & Recreation, am I right? Also: holy shit, that’s what GIF stands for? It sounds so futuristically alien when you spell it out.

Oh, but the GIFs will not be framed in a gallery, sadly, just blown up on a BAM’s giant outdoor digital screen on Flatbush Avenue—like so many Madison Square Garden ads for Muse in concert. When will this precious art form get its due? Once they’ve outlived their practical utility.

First of all: ahahahaha Salon thought they needed to take Dan Chaon, an author and writing professor, to task for—get this—telling his students to read. “Most contemporary literary fiction is terrible,” the headline reads, and it may not shock you to learn that what follows doesn’t exactly expand on that idea so much as repeatedly accept it at face value. Fair enough, thou click-baiting contrarian cads!

But then of course the commenters have to prove their own mettle and it is just glorious. Here are some highlights:

—People continually praising someone named “Cormack” McCarthy.

—“Bleak House, Dante’s Inferno, Portrait of a Lady, and Gulliver’s Travels are probably some of the most unpleasant reads I’ve ever experienced.”

—“I don’t completely agree, and have blogged on Huffington Post about it.”

—The addition of “echo chamber” to every mention of “MFA.”

—“To paraphrase Roland Barthes…”

—“A few years ago in Venice (where I live)…”

—“I don’t think I know one guy under 50 (outside of writers) who reads any fiction.”

Have you gotten a good chuckle yet about how the New York Post made this big dumb cue ball of an FDNY employee weep and wail when they confronted him about his racist Twitter screeds, written under the alias “Bad Lieutenant” and an avatar of Hitler? Because this is schadenfreude at its guilt-free best. Anyway, leave it to Mayor Bloomberg to miss the point.

“I don’t understand why people don’t understand that anything you write, anything you send out is going to be re-tweeted, re- Facebooked, re-this, re-that,” Bloomberg said one day after EMT Lt. Timothy Dluhos was suspended for 30 days without pay as the FDNY probes his postings. … Bloomberg offered this Internet-age version of the Golden Rule: “Write down, No. 1, only things you believe, and, No. 2, think about how it would look if somebody else sees it.”

Um, what the shit? Pretty sure this dude’s problem was not that he failed to follow rule No. 1. And: think about how it would look? WHAT ABOUT JUST NOT BEING RACIST, THEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT WHICH OF YOUR TOXIC BELIEFS ARE ANATHEMA TO SOCIETY. I just can’t believe that reeducation on retweeting is supposed to get us anywhere on the basic human empathy front—though trying to confine casual sexism to Reddit is going pretty well, I suppose.

Fans of Zombieland, the 2009 horror-comedy that was not, sadly, a weird sequel to Adventureland, will be excited to know that Amazon, in an effort to be as cool as Netflix, has greenlighted a series version of the film. Of course, this isn’t TV—it’s the internet. You’re not going to find your Jesse Eisenbergs or your Emma Stones or your Woody Harrelsons or your Abigail Breslins or even your Bill Murray cameos on an online retailer’s original programming network. Behold, the cast of Zombieland: The WebTV Show. Kirk Ward, Maiara Walsh, Tyler Ross, and Izabela Vidovic will star in what Amazon hopes will be their House of Cards. I am dubious; at least House of Cards had Kevin Spacey and a Mara sister.

Here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at how things work at BlackBook: I saw online that Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (not the dude from Matchbox Twenty, as I just learned) and the show’s star Kristen Bell launched a Kickstarter campaign that is hoping to raise two million dollars to make a movie based on the series, which was cancelled after three seasons in 2007. I never watched that show, despite the intentions of many of my friends to get me to watch it, because the concept sounded preposterous. (I say that having willingly watched the entire first season of Smash.) I turned to both of my coworkers and said, "Hey, did either of you watch Veronica Mars?" Both of them stared back, blankly, and said no. "Oh, hm," I replied, thinking, "Perhaps someone with the knowledge of this show should write a post about it." And then I realized that writing blog posts about entertainment news requires very little skill and knowledge! So, basically, here is the Kickstarter campaign for the Veronica Mars movie.

I still have not seen a Harlem Shake video. I’m usually not the kind to boast about deliberately avoiding a shared cultural experience, but I have no idea and, honestly, I’m OK with it. There has never been one shred of my existence that has ever wanted to participate in any sort of viral video sensation (or flash mob, which I feel like we’re bordering on here). That is why I do not understand the thought process that would sway, say, miners in Australia to take a break from their clinkin’ and their diggin’ to dance around in a cave. The only good thing to come out of this meme is that the fifteen people involved in the video were fired. How’s that for a resume killer? ("Why did you leave your last position?" "Because I danced on the job and filmed it for some stupid, stupid joke that no one will remember in ten years.")

Hey gang, I really love your Parks and Rec subtitle GIF photoset on your Tumblrs, and, man, that scene from Community was sooooo funny and all, but until you start GOING INTO FUCKING OUTER SPACE, I think we could all use a break from your guerilla marketing campaign for poorly rated NBC sitcoms. Oh, what’s that? A GIF of Honey Boo Boo drinking juice? Yeah, well, here’s an animated GIF of The Pelican Nebula, so, you know, shut up about your looping silent video of a clip from a reality TV show, OK?

See more of these amazing images by Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio here. [via B. Michael Payne]